They Might Be Giants

A Team - And A Coach - Come of Age in One Memorable High School Cross Country Season

The Class I State Championships were held on the worst weather day of the year; howling winds swept though Derryfield Park with frightening force, leveling tents and cowing spectators. Meanwhile I flitted around in jeans shorts, half out of my mind with excitement I hoped was contagious. Our hope was to finish in the top five and advance to the Meet of Champions—a race that brings together the state’s best from all divisions—for the first time ever.

I had no climactic words for the boys as they stripped down and threw themselves before the mercy of the elements. "You know how to race," I intoned, my words swept away by the gale. "Just remember that no amount of money can buy that crazy feeling in your guts! Now get out there and love the race." Moments later, a gunshot dispatched them toward the maw of destiny.

At the midpoint we looked good. Con-Val and Hanover had asserted themselves up front, while Jeremy, in a desperate effort at redemption, ran stride for stride with Tyler in the top twenty. "Push, keep pushing. Don’t settle," I silently willed them on. Andrew, exquisitely focused on this one endeavor for months, clung to the tail end of the second pack. Mike zipped by soon after. But our fifth runner, Eric Arnstein, normally a mainstay and a motivational lynchpin, was struggling. And we needed five great races today, not one or three or four.

Fortunately, Jeff Samson—a junior who, after joining the team midway through his sophomore year, finished his first 5K race in 28 minutes, beet-red and vomiting—appeared to be running the race of his life and was rapidly closing on Eric. "Coach, I hate this course," he’d told me after the Manchester Invitational a month earlier. Evidently he’d forgotten that utterance.

I darted to the finish. With a quarter mile to go, Tyler, with his choppy, chest-first style, and Jeremy, a mass of battered tendons and sheer guts, crashed along in a large, teeming pack. Con-Val’s front four were grouped together just ahead. With fire in their eyes, Brady’s top guns fell across the line strides apart in 13th and 15th.

My eyes groped up the stretch; the trickle of finishing runners was becoming a torrent now. Time telescoped into a series of churning legs, robbing me of all sensation even in the awful cold. And I waited...

There. Andrew had fallen back a bit, but his strategy proved sound as he hung on for 31st. A hundred yards behind, Mike and the unheralded Samson—still as florid as ever but about to record his best Derryfield time by almost one minute—closed fast as our fourth and fifth runners. The rest of it was a sea of colors and spit and heaving bodies; determined youngsters thrashing around half-naked on a day seemingly meant for curling up by the fire.